Succulents and More™

It’s official: Summer is over. The days are getting shorter, but to me, the most obvious sign of fall is the quality of the light: In the summer, the light is glaring and harsh. At this time of year, it’s noticeably warmer because the sun is lower in the sky. I complain about the summer and the heat all the time during the summer , but at the cusp of fall, when summer is slipping away, I don’t want to let it go. Looking at the forecast for next week, it appears summer isn’t quite ready to fade away either: temperatures in the low to mid-90s for a solid week, starting tomorrow. Sorry for the random introduction, but here’s the late-September edition of This and that . BRUNSRYLLIS FLOWERING FOR THE FIRST TIME No, “brunsryllis” isn’t a typo, nor is it a rare tropical disease. It’s a hybrid between two South African bulbs, Brunsvigia litoralis and Amaryllis belladonna . I’ve never seen a Brunsvigia litoralis in real life ( it looks like this ), but Amaryllis belladonna is the common nake...

Gravity is a good thing. But too much of a good thing is not so good anymore. I’ve been battling an excess of gravity in the garden for a while. Here are the two most recent examples. Yucca queretaroensis (or, more likely, a naturally occurring hybrid between Yucca queretaroensis and Yucca filifera ) has become a signature plant in front of the house. It’s now over 7 ft. tall. But it’s not only grown in height, it’s also grown in lean. Call it the Leaning Yucca of Davis. Yucca queretaroensis today It gets plenty of sun, and yet it’s leaning towards the west as if to catch every last ray of sunshine. Lately, the lean has become more pronounced, as if gravity is pulling the (no doubt heavy) head down. I have no idea if (or when) it will eventually topple over, but it would definitely crush a few things in its path. The plants inside the yellow oval would get flattened if the yucca fell There’s nothing I do to make this Yucca queretaroensis straight. It’s simply too big and too heavy ...

We once had a Great Dane named Cisco. We got him as a young puppy. Puppyhood didn’t last long. Within a year, he had tripled in weight. He wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, but he was very loving (and lovable). Cisco with my mother Legs for days For some reason, I thought of Cisco when I finally accepted the fact that the hechtia in the photo below was simply too big to live here: Hechtia ‘Oaxaca Sunset’ reaching towards Agave impressa This top-down view... ...illustrates the situation very well It wasn’t always like that. Here’s Hechtia ‘Oaxaca Sunset’, on the right in all its compact-sized glory, in March 2023: Hechtia ‘Oaxaca Sunset’ on the right ( Lachenalia quadricolor , a South African bulb, on the left) But, like Cisco, Hechtia ‘Oaxaca Sunset’ eventually grew up and ended up occupying more space than I had allotted (the fact that it formed a clump, rather than just one rosette, exacerbated the situation). Seeing how Agave impressa would always come out on top, it wasn’t...